Building Emotion in Fiction Writing

Edgar Degas said, "...art is not what you see but what you make others see..."

I really like that quote. It's one I think about from time and time, especially when someone else has made me think about things. And last week, Liz made me think. If you haven't read her post yet, you should. 

One of my biggest challenges as a writer is getting the emotion right. As I'm drafting a book, I have to get the scene in my head on the page as fast as possible; it's part of my process. If I don't write it fast, especially those scenes that change something major for the hero or heroine, I might lose that thread for a while. I hate that feeling because I can keep pushing forward but I know the book is missing something. That I'm missing the point, at least a little bit.

Which is why I don't mind the first round of edits so much. (we won't talk about Rounds 3 - ? because I do not feel the same way about them. No, I do not). It's a chance to grasp that thread that I might have missed the first time. Maybe I have the dialogue, but did I remember how the characters reacted to the room around them? Do they walk/wander? sit? move closer to each other? farther away? All of those things can hint at emotion, and can draw the reader into a deeper connection with the character and with the book.

Its what Degas was talking about in the quote above - art isn't about *me* seeing the scene that I'm writing. It's about me interpreting that scene onto the page for the reader to see, and hopefully she (or he) sees what I see. Or maybe they see a little bit more.

How do I do approach the emotion edits? Here are a few tips:

• I look for areas where I told the reader what was happening instead of showing them

I watch for areas that I may have used 'telling' (Smith hated cemeteries) and can instead 'show' the reader: As the long, black limo pulled to a stop near a pristine patch of emerald grass, Smith clenched his jaw and pulled at the tight collar of his shirt. He stared hard at the pile of dirt marring the pristine, green lawn and gritted his teeth when his gaze landed on the polished brown rectangle offset from the gaping maw beneath. He couldn't make his hand reach for the door handle, even as the occupants of the long line of somber, black funeral vehicles began their trip across the lawn. The limo driver hit a button and the glass screen between his part of the car and the driver's lowered. 

"Anything wrong, sir?"

• I cut out the melodrama in favor of real emotion

First, let me say that there is nothing wrong with a well-placed sigh or a head-desk moment for either your hero or your heroine. But, if you run a word search in your document and there are more than, lets say, 10 (thats a totally random number) sighs or faces-hitting-palms or groans or ____, you may have a high melodrama factor. Signs and groans and characters having public meltdowns every chapter aren't the way to get your reader invested in your characters (unless your point is to make the reader want to kill your character...but that's a whole other thing). Look for better ways to describe how your character can take in whatever information is making him or her sigh, groan, head-desk, etc. Continuing my example from above, melodramatic telling of Smith's reaction to the cemetery could be: Smith sighed loudly. "why would anything be wrong?" he asked snippily to the limo driver before punching the button that would cut him off from the driver. He got out of the limo and slammed the door behind him.

A reaction that will have the reader rooting for Smith might be: Smith shook his head. "It will be fine," he told the driver before forcing his sweaty hand to pull the door handle and let in the sound of the birds singing in the trees lining the cemetery lane. He forced his legs forward, wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible. To shake all the hands and reassure his father's business associates nothing would affect Lancaster Holdings. 

• I look for scenes I might have 'skipped' in the drafting stage

Part of why our readers pick up our books is to go on a journey. We want to take them on those journeys, but as writers, it can be hard to get into those really dark, emotional moments. Rewarding, but hard. Those scenes can also slow down my drafting stage and as I mentioned before, part of my drafting stage is getting the story in my head on the page as quickly as possible. So, in edits, I look for scenes that I may have skipped: maybe I was feeling emotional the day I wrote the black moment, so I wrote an easier black moment. Maybe instead of going deep into the hero's inner conflict, I focused his conflict on a superficial-ish, external conflict. Continuing with my Smith example: He'd seen the faces surrounding the casket at board meetings and company barbecues most of his life. The familiarity of them should have been a comfort but all that kept rolling around in his head was his father's voice, telling him to fix things with Mags. "Family is what matters, boy," George Lancaster said just two months before. "Family is all that matters. Whatever you did or didn't do, fix it. Don't let her get away." And then it hit him. 

Dad was right. Family was what mattered. Not corporate mergers. Not board meetings. His father having a funeral filled with business associates instead of actual friends. Rival CEOs instead of family members. He didn't want his father's life, though he adored the old buzzard. He wanted the life his father told him to go after. The life that, in the end, George realized he'd preached about but never really built.

Don't think that extra scenes have to have 10,000 words to your book. Sometimes an extra 'scene' is two or three paragraphs that take what the hero thinks is wrong (his father's untimely death and how that impacts his inheritance) to another level of what is actually wrong (his father's death means he has no family left and he was raised to believe family is the only thing that matters).

Do you have any tips on adding emotion to your stories?        ~Kristina